After ordinance change, man opts to shelve antenna plan

Minutes after the Northbrook zoning code was changed to make it easier for Gregg Salomone to apply to erect a 26-foot ham radio antenna in his front yard, Salomone said he wouldn’t apply, after all.

His decision came shortly after a Northbrook Village Board meeting in which the change was voted in, when a couple of his neighbors, speaking in the emptying board room, made it clear they didn’t like the idea at all.

“No one in his right mind would let him put his tower in there,” neighbor Larry Guthman said. “There’s no reason for it.”

Salomone said later, that, “after careful consideration, I have decided to withdraw my request for the antenna.”

He said he didn’t “want to cause undue waves” among his neighbors.

“I respect what they have to say, and I’m happy they recognize my viewpoint, too,” Salomone said. “I applaud the village for being progressive and accommodating.”

Salomone said he had received letters approving of his tower proposal from the people who shared his cul-de-sac on the 4000 block of Yorkshire Lane. But his backyard neighbor, Guthman, said that he and three other nearby residents outside the cul-de-sac were not on board. They thought it would be too tall, unsightly and harmful to property values.

Salomone wanted the antenna in the front because he didn’t have enough room in the back, as he has at four other Northbrook homes over the years.

Guthman said that he would have disliked it if Salomone had erected the 26-foot, inch-wide antennae in the back yard, too, though, according to officials, a backyard antenna wouldn’t have required any special approvals.

In June, trustees decided to resurrect an ordinance on the back burner for two years after Salomone applied for the 26-foot antenna. The new law’s concept is that property owners who need a change by degree of a zoning code requirement could do so more easily. Mostly, the changes would involve a “dimensional standard,”…